Interaction dynamics between innate and adaptive immune cells responding to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in non-human primates.

As SARS-CoV-2 variants continue evolving, testing updated vaccines in non-human primates remains important for guiding human clinical practice. To date, such studies have focused on antibody titers and antigen-specific B and T cell frequencies. Here, we extend our understanding by integrating innate and adaptive immune responses to mRNA-1273 vaccination in rhesus macaques. We sorted innate immune cells from a pre-vaccine time point, as well as innate immune cells and antigen-specific peripheral B and T cells two weeks after each of two vaccine doses and used single-cell sequencing to assess the transcriptomes and adaptive immune receptors of each cell. We show that a subset of S-specific T cells expresses cytokines critical for activating innate responses, with a concomitant increase in CCR5-expressing intermediate monocytes and a shift of natural killer cells to a more cytotoxic phenotype. The second vaccine dose, administered 4 weeks after the first, elicits an increase in circulating germinal center-like B cells 2 weeks later, which are more clonally expanded and enriched for epitopes in the receptor binding domain. Both doses stimulate inflammatory response genes associated with elevated antibody production. Overall, we provide a comprehensive picture of bidirectional signaling between innate and adaptive components of the immune system and suggest potential mechanisms for the enhanced response to secondary exposure.

Novel microRNA discovery using small RNA sequencing in post-mortem human brain.

BACKGROUND: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression mainly through translational repression of target mRNA molecules. More than 2700 human miRNAs have been identified and some are known to be associated with disease phenotypes and to display tissue-specific patterns of expression. METHODS: We used high-throughput small RNA sequencing to discover novel miRNAs in 93 human post-mortem prefrontal cortex samples from individuals with Huntington's disease (n = 28) or Parkinson's disease (n = 29) and controls without neurological impairment (n = 36). A custom miRNA identification analysis pipeline was built, which utilizes miRDeep* miRNA identification and result filtering based on false positive rate estimates. RESULTS: Ninety-nine novel miRNA candidates with a false positive rate of less than 5 % were identified. Thirty-four of the candidate miRNAs show sequence similarity with known mature miRNA sequences and may be novel members of known miRNA families, while the remaining 65 may constitute previously undiscovered families of miRNAs. Nineteen of the 99 candidate miRNAs were replicated using independent, publicly-available human brain RNA-sequencing samples, and seven were experimentally validated using qPCR. CONCLUSIONS: We have used small RNA sequencing to identify 99 putative novel miRNAs that are present in human brain samples.